General overall scheme of things

I’ve had a bit of a theme overhaul here. I hope you like it.  I was a bit bored with the previous theme, and sometimes it nice to have new look.  It has been prompted from the interesting things  blogger are doing with introducing new ways to view blog posts, in an attempt to change the way people consume content and make it new and visually exciting.  The new look for my blog isn’t really dynamic but it’s clean and fresh looking and it makes me happy.

Coming back from Museums and the Web (I still have lots to digest from this – games, mobile parade, Google Art Project just to name a few!) has given me the head space to really start to get to grips with The Elmer PhuD.

I’m going to be looking specifically at how museum visitors both online and inside the gallery make sense of digital content.  The aim is to look closely at the steps through which museum visitors construct meaning from, and interact with, the digital museum information.   I want to be truly focused in the user and not the museum. Almost all current museum studies focus on the observer or the museum.  Asking questions which are museum focused; Do you like us? Which of things we do you like? Why? On top of multiple choice questions where the museum visitors tick off the good and bad experiences. While some of these questions are more user focused than others, all start from a museum perspective, and are a constructed reality that the museum visitor has to fit into. So I’m going to try and turn that on its head. And look at characteristics of visitor behaviour and ask specific questions about the why, what for and how.

I’m also in the midst of planning the next Digital Learning Network event at The National Archives in June, as well as the next think drink (stay tuned for that one!).  The DLNet day at TNA should be really great. We will be looking at how teachers use digital resources in the classroom and what they actually want from museum, library and archive digital resources.   The day will include Q&A with teachers; top tips for evaluation, an overview of methodologies for digital resources and there will also be nifty demos of whiteboard technology.  It should be a really busy day!

QRator is ticking along nicely, the Grant Museum is having a grand old time with the iPads and the website is now live so you read all the comments even when you are not in the museum.  You can also have your say via twitter on some excellent questions about natural history museums, conservation, animal testing and extinction.

InterFace is also drawing ever nearer. All the lightening talk delegates have been notified and we have a great selection of speakers, workshops and cake lined up!

In the next couple of weeks, Museums at Night is coming up! I’m excited! I will be heading to Newcastle for the Late Shows! I can’t wait to have a peek in the Victoria Tunnel! You can see my itinerary here.

And then there is #MuseumNext! Awesome.

The Elmer PhuD.

Today I officially start my Digital Humanities PhD. Scary. For reasons I can’t quite recall (twitter was involved I’m sure) it has been renamed the Fudd. The Elmer Fudd. So Be vewy vewy quiet, I’m hunting wabbits.

I was lucky enough to be awarded the UCL Digital Humanities Scholarship after a scary interview process earlier in 2010 (I think knowing the interviewers makes the whole process worse, the fear of letting them down as well as myself is horrific).  Thankfully my interview went well, quoting Field of Dreams ‘build it and they will come’ was a personal highlight.  Not a lot about my working environment will change, I will still be a part of UCLDH, and working on a few projects, however most of my time will now be working towards a Doctorate rather than a monthly pay check.  I am incredibly nervous, and excited in equal measure about getting started.

The aim of my research is to explore the value, usefulness and importance of online museum content from a users perspective, by developing an awareness of the perceptions that users have of the museum information environment both on main museum website as well as on external social media applications, and assess how this will influence metrics and evaluation.  And most importantly what on earth people do with that content once they have found it.

“The thing people are amazed about with the web is that, when you put something online, you don’t know who is going to use it—but it does get used.” Berners-Lee 2010

I want to know why, what for and how.   In order to create improved access to museum resources it is important to improve our own understanding of how users seek, interact with and use museum content. So my research aims to enhance our understanding of the value and impact of digital cultural content by exploring user information seeking and interaction behaviour.  The research also aims to provide evidence of museum impact upon users within a more distributed web 2.0 environment.  Quite a lot of research has been done on specific user groups’ information-seeking behaviour within libraries, archival and legal services (have a look at Warwick et al 2008, Rimmer et al 2006, 2008, Makri 2008). However much less is known about the information seeking behaviour of user groups using Museum online content.  So I want to draw upon usability, participatory and information seeking behaviour research to add to the understanding of how and why museum visitors access and use online museum content.

So yes the official start. 10^th Jan 2011. I guess this is a bit of an artificial construct really, in the sense that I have three years to complete my research and the first day could just as well be today or last week or in three weeks time. But I feel ready to start the project, in fact itching to start.  It’s werid to think that my academic &  museum profesional career, my hobbies and my passions to date have combined to this big juicy scary research project.  Terrifying.  I’m trying my very best not to panic and write my thesis in my first week.

Wish me luck. Let’s see how it goes!